Get Lost With Rosemary Morris!

WHO IS ROSEMARY MORRIS?

Rosemary Morris was born in 1940 in Sidcup Kent.  As a child, when she was not making up stories, her head was ‘always in a book.’

While working in a travel agency, Rosemary met her Indian husband.  He encouraged her to continue her education at Westminster College.  In 1961 Rosemary and her husband, now a barrister, moved to his birthplace, Kenya, where she lived from 1961 until 1982.  After an attempted coup d’état, she and four of her children lived in an ashram in France. Back in England, Rosemary wrote historical fiction.  She is now a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, Historical Novel Society and Watford Writers.

In 2012 Rosemary Morris’s novel Tangled Love, set in the reign of Queen Anne Stuart 1702-1714, and was short-listed for the best romantic e-novel of the year at The Romance Festival (U.K.)

FAR BEYOND RUBIES

Set in 1706 during Queen Anne Stuart’s reign Far Beyond Rubies erupts when William, Baron Kemp, Juliana’s half-brother claims she and her sister are bastards. Juliana is determined to prove the allegation is false and that she is the rightful heiress to Riverside, a great estate.

 On his way to deliver a letter to William, Gervaise sees Juliana for the first time in the grounds of her family home…The sight of her drew him back to India. Her form changed to one he knew intimately – but not in this birth.

An unexpected event brings Juliana and quixotic Gervaise together and circumstances force Juliana to accept his kind help. However, when Juliana’s life irrevocably tangled with Gervaise’s she discovers he is not all that he seems.

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ALEXA: How often do you get lost in a story?

ROSEMARY: Every day.

ALEXA:What’s the first book you remember reading?

ROSEMARY: The Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton.  

ALEXA:  What’s your favorite fairy tale?

ROSEMARY: The famous story of unrequited love, The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Anderson

ALEXA: Where do you read and how often?

ROSEMARY:  I always read in bed for half an hour or an hour before I go to sleep at night.

ALEXA: What sound or noise do you love?

ROSEMARY: The sound of waves gently advancing and retreating on the shore.

ALEXA: What’s something you'd like to tell your fans?

ROSEMARY:  I enjoy weaving my historical novels and hope others will enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them.

ALEXA: What’s your favorite kind of story to get lost in?

ROSEMARY:  Historical fiction in which the characters act according to the society in which they live thus bringing the past to life.

ALEXA: If you couldn't be a writer anymore, what profession would you take up?

ROSEMARY: As well as being a writer I garden organically so I would become a professional gardener growing herbs, fruit and vegetables.

ALEXA: What’s the first thing you do when you finish writing a book?

ROSEMARY:  With very few exceptions I begin writing at 6 a.m., so the first thing I do after finishing a book is sleep in on the following morning before beginning a new book on the next day.

ALEXA: If you could interview one person (and it doesn't have to be a writer) who would it be?
ROSEMARY: A.C. Bhaktivedanta Srila Prabhupada who translated fascinating classical Indian literature for the first time. (The well-known Indian classics The Mahabharat and The Ramayan rival the Iliad and The Odyssey.)

ALEXA: Tea or Coffee? And how do you take it?

ROSEMARY: I usually drink herbal tea, often made with herbs from my garden and sweetened with organic honey, Rooibus (redbush) tea, or green tea with a thick slice of unwaxed lemon and organic honey.

ALEXA: What does it mean to love someone?

ROSEMARY: To want to please the loved one more than one wants to please oneself.
 
ALEXA: What color would you make the sky if it wasn't going to be blue anymore and why?
ROSEMARY: Soft green because it would set of the clouds and the sun as well as complementing vegetation, seas, rivers etc., and deserts.
 
ALEXA: What's your favorite kid joke?
ROSEMARY: (I don’t know if this is a joke, but it is and entertaining true story.) Grandmother. “No, you may not have another biscuit.”

Just three-year-old granddaughter. “I’m going to call the big bad wolf. He has sharp teeth and eats grandmothers for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The woodcutter won’t save you. The big bad wolf will eat you all up. And then I can eat as many biscuits as I want to.”

Very amused grandmother. “Here’s the phone. Call the big bad wolf.” Granddaughter collapses on the floor in giggles. “Silly, Grandma, he doesn’t have a phone.”

ALEXA: Which era would you least like to have lived in, fashion-wise and why? Most?

ROSEMARY: During the 2^nd World War in England when clothes and materials were rationed. (People went so far as to unravel knitted garments and use the wool to knit others.) It was the era of ‘make do and mend’ in the United Kingdom.

ALEXA: If you were a t-shirt, what color would you be and why?

ROSEMARY: White because whenever I wore the t-shirt it would be comparable to a blank canvas waiting to see what would happen during the day.